THIS IS THE RANT SECTION READ IF YOU WANT TO As of now, I am still in act 2 grinding my way slowly through to get the next ship. It was only until recently that I've noticed something about Manticore that stood out to me. It was the fact that as the player began leveling and fighting more powerful foes, he had to frequently change ships and types of ships, and the weapon loadout of the player's vessel. Compare this to Galaxy on Fire 2, and you'll see that GoF2 is much more diverse, and offers much more paths for the player to choose. Such as, what equipment should he mount. What weapons should he use for this specific mission. Should he load a missile or a bomb. Should he buy a heavy, brawling ship or a fast, agile hit-and-run ship. All these things made up a huge aspect of what GoF2 was and this truly did make the game one of the best games on the app store. Now, compare that to its successor, Galaxy on Fire 3. GoF3 is rather linear compared to its predecessor, as you cannot choose between different weapons or ships to your liking as easily. Why? Mostly due to the 'Power Rating' (or whatever it's called. I kinda forgot) of the equipment in the game. As the player progresses through the game, the player will have to build or purchase ships and weapons with a certain power rating. This throws me off a bit, because in a video that Fishlabs posted on Youtube, found here, Fishlabs showcases the different kinds of ships. This made me think that the player would get to choose the ships and customize them to his liking and his play style, and that all the ships would be slightly different from each other, but not too much better or worse than the other, but this is not the case. Each ship has a distinct power rating, and this can be increased a certain amount by upgrading the ship. But this only gets them so far before they need to obtain a new ship with a higher power rating. As the player progresses through the campaign, he will have to obtain loadouts with higher and higher power ratings, and if the player doesn't meet the requirements, the game will not allow him to play the mission. The power rating requirements for each mission increases at such a rate that a player can only meet the requirements for two missions just purely by upgrading his equipment before he needs new stuff. The biggest way to increase overall power rating within a short period of time is to acquire a new ship. The ships in the game are laid out like a thin road. As the player progresses, he will 'move' down the road. And as he progresses, he will need ships that pop up at a linear rate on the road. These ships can be a gunship, a scout, or a fighter. The issue is that the player may have a certain preferred play style that involves dog fighting with scouts, and may be very bad with gunships. But, being the way that GoF3 is, it does not care of the player's play style, and will force the player to use that gunship for missions just because it has a higher power rating than the ship that the player prefers to use. This makes it so that almost all of the ships within GoF3 are either better or worse than each other. If, say the most powerful ship in the game is a gunship, and the next most powerful ship is a scout, with a difference of 500 rating points between the two, most scout-primed players will probably put up with the gunship just for the sake of getting those 500 extra rating points. Or if they really can't put up with the gunship, they might try to revert to the scout, but will likely be slammed with a power rating requirement that requires them to use that gunship. Or if multiplayer rolls into the game, players will just use that gunship because of it's key advantage. A scout-primed player with a scout ship can probably take on a scout-primed player with a gunship because of how effectively the two can use their ships, but a scout-primed player with that scout ship cannot take on a gunship-primed player with that top notch gunship because of the advantage the game provides to that gunship. Now, in GoF2, that doesn't occur on a level that serious. Of course, there's a distinct advantage between that ship with one primary slot and that ship with freaking 5 weapon slots, but the late game specter wasn't too vastly different than the Bloodstar (combat effectiveness wise) that one would get vaporized within a whole minute sooner than the other. Plus, there weren't any requirements for ships in GoF2, aside from certain requirements for ships with turret slots and such. The way that the ships in GoF3 are laid out across the progression of the game just bothers me. Most people who signed up for that VIP package and got that sweet new Groza paint job might be very happy at first, but then the first 3 missions come in and *bam*. The dream in red and black is stuck in the hangar collecting dust, never to be flown in combat later in the game again.

So, what's this 'Idea' that you got? Relating back to my text wall above, I intend to try to solve the problem of the uneven ship levels. I know that the developers have taken time laying out the trail of ships, and I respect that. I don't want to try to change the whole thing too much. My idea is that you could upgrade a ship past its current maximum level to set the grounds even between the most powerful ship and the least. The way it works is that the closer the ship's rating is to the most powerful ship's, the less amount of times it can be upgraded past its maximum level. So, say the most powerful ship has a rating of 4,000 and the least powerful ship has a rating of 1,000 and ALL the ships were allowed to be upgraded past its maximum level, and would all increase by 100 power rating with each upgrade. The ship with 4,000 could not be upgraded AT ALL, due to it already being the biggest and baddest kid on the block, and the ship with 1,000 could be upgraded 30 times. The 30 times it gets upgraded, each upgrade increasing its power by 100, and adding an extra 3,000 total, giving it 4,000 all in all, same as the most powerful ship. But, the ship with 1,100 rating gets 29 upgrades, and the ship with 2,000 gets 20 upgrades, and so on (this is all just theoretical. In the game, it would be tailored to suit each ship). HOWEVER, a ship should not just be able to immediately be upgraded and upgraded until it hits the peak. That would defeat the purpose of acquiring new ships. So, say the Groza has hit its maximum power rating, and the player then needs to acquire the Morny (Moornta). The player won't be able to upgrade the Groza past its maximum level until the player has reached level 7 or maybe acquired the ship that comes after the Morny (or some other not-so-easy requirement). BUT, a player can only upgrade his ship past its max level a certain amount of times before he has to reach another requirement to start upgrading his ship again. The player should be able to upgrade the ship until it hits roughly the same power rating as the most powerful ship that he has currently unlocked (ex. If the player has unlocked the Shamash, and that ship is the most powerful ship that the player has unlocked, the player should be able to power up his Groza or Argus past its max level to meet roughly the same rating as the Shamash, before the player needs to fulfill another requirement to upgrade the ships again. And then the cycle continues until all the ships cap out at the most powerful ship's rating). The player will still be compelled to acquire the next ship, but won't be trekking through quicksand once he gets a ship that is his only hope of unlocking a mission and is terrible at using the ship. Of course, if it were to ever be implemented into the game, there would need to be lots of tweaks and modifications. Such as what the 'Overhaul' (I'm gonna start calling it that now, in case the idea ever comes to fruition) requirements are, how much a player is able to upgrade a ship within that window before hitting another requirement wall, and so on. Plus, the ships shouldn't cap out at exactly the same rating, but given a certain variation between them, but not too much so that no ship is less than the other, just different. But I truly want this game to be everything that the players have wanted it to be ever since the beta was announced. And so many players have gotten hyped at getting the Bloodstar, but were just disappointed because the Bloodstar was useless after a certain period of time. This could potentially spare players from the disappointment of buying a promising ship that ended up collecting dust.

(Edit: Realized something. The upgrades should have a pricey cost. Perhaps a large sum of credits, and a small fee of glow as an alternative. Also realized how it could affect purchases of ships for glow. Perhaps give them some special perks such as 'More credits earned per mission' or 'more blueprint parts dropped per mission' or 'accelerates exp accumulation on weapons to upgrade faster'. Or maybe let those ships overhaul at a marginally faster rate than standard ships. Also let those ships that are built by hunting down blueprint parts in exploration get some perks as well. That hard work should not be neutralized, and would give players more incentive to get the ship to counteract the reason not to get the ship.)P.S. - this could also apply to weapons, but I'm too lazy to think about how that would work

If any of you have ideas for this idea or some criticisms, please tell me in a civil manner, and I will go over and fix my post.